Robert Davis Hoffmann is a Tlingit poet and carver from the Tlingit Indian village of Kake, Alaska. He describes the sources behind his poetry and carving this way: "My desire to create comes from a drive to connect my past to the present, stated in my poem Saginaw Bay: ' ...I keep going back, I keep trying to see myself against all this history....' Creating new forms out of the old, I bridge the past with the present." -- from back cover.